. . . Ok, maybe not so "live" because it is now late in the evening on the day of the conference, but I'd like to share a few insights I gathered about the state of business-to-business (B2B) digital marketing today.

This was my second year at the event, and the highlight again was the social media awards. Featuring 10 categories ranging from integrated campaign, to Twitter, mobile, and Pinterest, BtoB singles out top performers in social marketing. It also unveils tech and nontech people's-choice awards as voted on by subscribers.

You can find the full list here, and I hope BtoB will publish the scripted descriptions in a future edition because all honorees were interesting and unique and offer B2B marketers a look into how to use social to advance business. Heartfelt congratulations to all award winners — well deserved!

Looking over the list, here are a few observations you can take away about the state of social marketing in B2B:

B2B lags behind business-to-consumer (B2C) in scope, impact, and creativity. Not to take anything away from award winners; there is plenty of great work here. But when taken together, you just don't see the big reach/influence numbers, eye-popping creative, or sheer exuberant engagement with B2B social marketing that you do with programs focused on consumers. Money and resources are clear limiting factors — B2C outspends B2B by leaps and bounds. I can't help but feel that the specificity of B2B audiences — and differences in social behavior and expectations while on the job — will likely cause this gap to remain for longer than B2B marketers would like to admit.

Integrated programs rule.BtoB magazine needs to rethink its award categories. Focusing on specific social tactics like LinkedIn, Facebook, viral video, corporate blogging, and mobile reinforce the notion that social is a "channel" and not a new way of engaging with customers. It's no surprise that award recipients in both integrated campaign categories — runner-up Deltek for tech and winner Aon for nontech — also won the people's-choice awards in their respective categories. Social just makes more sense when used with other tactics to engage potential buyers and customers in discussion about what your brand can offer their business.

B2B social use is wildly diverse. Social marketing is a bit of misnomer here, since award winners featured activity around corporate citizenship (Aon, GE, and UBM DeusM) and training and support (Dell, Cisco, and VMware) that fall outside of the brand awareness, consideration, and demand creation charters of mainstream marketing. I believe that this reflects B2B's ongoing struggle with figuring out how social fits into this new age of digitally savvy customers and the changing nature of the business contract between B2B buyers and sellers.

BtoB needs to broaden the field of participants. Oh, boy. I don't know how to make this point without sounding catty, but here goes: The folks we saw today are starting to look a little familiar. I mean, when Cisco gets the nod in three out of 10 categories two years in a row, don't you think it's time to see someone new? I was most intrigued by the Hobart (with gyro) iPad app that enabled sales to demo bulky machinery virtually, Dun & Bradstreet's "Ed Ahead" featuring its CEO with a bunch of third graders, and Sourcefire's "Breakdown of a Fake AV Scammer" reality point-of-view video. I think there are a bunch of B2B companies using social in similar ways with great results, but they are too busy — or unaware — to get involved in submission and voting. Well, maybe they should . . .

B2B marketers still struggle with explaining the value of engaging in social activity for business purposes. Award descriptions were rife with metrics like followers, views, and impressions. You know, the kinds of measures that keep marketing in the make-it-pretty department. I give a hats off to Hobart for generating 300 leads with its iPad app and Intel for boosting its HealthIT community with 1,200 more members through weightier blog topics. These are the kinds of results the whole business can care about.

If you attended the conference or followed along online or at Twitter #BtoBLive, feel free to chime in with a comment or two about what caught your fancy.

Comments

I'm so glad you made that first point about creativity lagging. I spoke on the agency panel about digital trends at yesterday's event. There's was one comment I made that everyone brought up to me afterward—that we're not b2b marketers, we're p2p marketers. People to people. Customers are not a bunch of 'Bs' waiting for our "Bs" to align with their salient points. They're people who go home and watch Game of Thrones, that put videos of their kids on Facebook, that read the Onion. B2B marketers need to stop being so damn uptight and tell stories that connect with customers on a human level.

Adam, agree with you entirely. B2B marketers rarely get the concept of "personas" either, which is another symptom of not understanding that B2B is really about the people -- and that the lines between business and personal social use continue to blur.

I think the more interesting award winners - Aon (community service), Emerson (painted compressors), and Intel (healthcare) - each had a distinct, human, emotional perspective. Perhaps categories that BtoB should consider adding in the future might include "Best Storyteller" or "Best Human Interest" or "Best Advocacy"?

I do think BtoB recognizes the importance of storytelling overall. This was a social media award show, not an overall advertising award show--which they did have a few months ago. In that, they gave us an award for best online campaignb for the work we did on Robert Half's Accountemps brand.

I hear you, but I would caveat your point about storytelling by saying "some" B2B recognize its importance. From where I sit, I'm still seeing a lot of feeds, speeds, and jargon-laced talk. Look at my last post on content marketing backlash and the poor quality of what we call thought leadership.

Hi Laura: Thank you for your precise and thoughtful comments and suggestions. I'm sure we'll take them to heart in planning for next year's program and awards. I think the key here -- for both BtoB and marketers -- is differentiation: How can such conferences featuring marketing experts, and award programs specifically, offer something new and compelling that marketers and their teams want to attend, and will gain something from? Ditto the awards category, which shouldn't merely reward great efforts from the previous year, but point the way toward evolved possible excellence that others can aspire to.